The interview was more like an informal chat because Doc Hilton, as he was always called, could never stay on the same subject for more than a couple of minutes. He was a small rotund man, with glasses and an impish face, who appeared gentle and pleasant. He gave me the impression that he thought up a new idea every five minutes but never insisted or demanded that it should be investigated further. Later I was to find out how correct this impression was. At the end of the chat I assumed that I had been accepted and, sure enough, an offer arrived for me to become a project engineer within his team.
    The APG was within a large modern building looking towards the River Thames. The astronautics section was on the ground floor in an open plan office whilst the aircraft section was on the floor above. Most of the time I was there this section was considering supersonic passenger aircraft, some based on the swing-wing concept. About this time HSA, along with the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), was given a joint feasibility study to consider the fuselage-wing combination, from which BAC’s approach was adopted leading eventually to the Concorde. Subsequently the aircraft section within APG was disbanded.
    Dr Hilton’s staff numbered about thirteen plus himself and a secretary. There seemed to be no plan of activity, everyone was ‘doing their own thing’. Most were scientifically qualified with only two who possessed some engineering background.

It was like a home for those who wished to pursue their own wild, space-related ideas. Amongst the staff there were two mathematicians writing and testing computer programmes for others in the group, several were concerned with various orbits and there was an electronics engineer from Mullard. I took a couple of weeks to acquaint myself with their activities and having received no firm instructions about what I should do, despite asking Doc Hilton many times, I suggested that the section should meet regularly to define where it was going and what it should do. At first nobody could see the need for this but only after my persistent nagging, and warnings that at some point the HSA hierarchy would ask what we had been up to, did they at last begin to agree.
    Doc Hilton was, of course, in the chair at the first meeting but all he wanted to do was float more ideas for any of his staff to take up if they wished. I tried desperately and repeatedly to bring some order to the chaotic situation by suggesting a programme which some or all of us could work towards, but with little success. Part of my proposal was to produce outline designs of communication satellites for use in elliptic orbits which Doc Hilton was pushing so hard in all the numerous papers he wrote and lectures he gave.

Most, except electronics engineer John Millburn, gave only lip service to my proposal and obviously did not wish to be distracted from their own personal interests despite my warnings that there would be a day of reckoning. John and I went away from the meeting with the idea that the group might become interested in my suggestions and, in addition, produce regular progress reports which would at least show management what and how we were doing.

It did in fact interest others  in the group who were wrestling with a series of folding solar cell panels to provide the electrical energy for a communication satellite. Sam Dauncey came in one day with a sensible suggestion which John and I incorporated in a paper presented at a conference and published in 1961in the journal of the British Institute of Radio Engineers. This, I recall, was the only real piece of constructive work I undertook at the APG, apart from trying to develop layouts for a series of communication satellites.
    There were occasions when I considered that I was wasting my time and should yet again move on, but fate was taking a hand in my affairs. In 1960-61 de Havilland Aircraft became part of HSA and when it had had time to digest what it had taken on it realised that it had two astronautics groups, one in London under Geoffrey Pardoe (DH) and one in Kingston under Doc Hilton (HSA).

The rumours soon circulated about integration and possible redundancies. Knowing Geof Pardoe from my days with Blue Streak it was clear to me who would lead the combined group. Sometime in the Autumn of 1961 the APG astronautics section was transferred to Hawker Siddeley Dynamics at Welkin House in London; along with me. When none of the aircraft projects at APG generated interest and we could not convince the GPO to spend money on us to consider communication satellites (it just bought US channels at knocked down prices from Hughes rather than advance UK technology), APG was disbanded.
    In late 1961 I joined DH Aircraft as a Space Research Engineer trying desperately to sell Blue Streak as the main launch vehicle for communication satellites  funded by the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) and the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO).

In the HSA reorganisation I soon became part of Hawker Siddeley Dynamics Ltd based in London. It was extremely interesting and allowed me to contact and visit so many  different European companies. But eventually this had to come to an end and my work for the Hawker Siddeley was finished.